Yours Completed One Shot
by Arc Morpheus
Summary: What happen's when a chance meeting of souls unfolds into something that you never imagined? Emmett is married to Rosalie, but? There's always a but, this is what happens after they both take on board a little 'too' friendly advice from a stranger. So let me tell you a love story...


'Yours'

by

Arc Morpheus

I'm sitting in Christopher's the American bar-diner on Wellington Street, on one of the high stools at the bar, working my way through my fourth Budweiser. Tonight I drink with a determined resolve, hoping to put some distance between consciousness and troubled thoughts. In front of me, above the inverted, suspended bottles, a neon Coca-cola sign stammers hypnotically, and I pretend it is all there is to notice, but through the blanket smoke and dim lighting, an older man emerges to sit next to me. He buries a strong, lean hand in the dish of peanuts that sits between us and plucks a couple to be carried to a crooked, perfect mouth. He orders a double Jack Daniels and a slim panatela. He sips one and puffs on the other a few times and then turns to me.

"You looked troubled, son."

I don't want to talk to anyone right now, let alone share my thoughts with a stranger. But to be polite, I offer a token explanation.

"Bit of a hard day at work, that's all."

The older man nods wisely. His eyes become narrow slits as he draws from his cigar. Through the exhaled smoke he says, ''Nothing to do with a woman then?"

I swallow my beer a bit too heavily, wanting to cough but not wishing to show reaction to the older man's insightful probe.

"Maybe," I tell him noncommittally and turn back to my beer, hoping the conversation to be over.

But it's not.

"Let me tell you a love story." he says. angling himself in his seat so as to face me, and I know he is going to tell it whether I wish to hear or not.

He begins.

And despite my reluctance, I listen.

"It was a long time ago now, back when I still had more years before me than behind; when growing old was something that other people did. Back then I had this shitty factory job. Eight hours a day standing in front of a conveyor belt putting together clockwork toys. Not a whole load of fun, I'm sure you'd agree."

I match his wry smile.

"Well, I thought that if I could become educated, I could escape to better things. So I started going to the library. Every night, straight after work, there I was, a big pile of books around me, reading anything and everything. I didn't really have a plan, no sort of goal or idea of what I wanted to achieve. I just thought that if I saturated myself in all that knowledge, a bit of it would rub off. If I became clever, I wouldn't have to work in that factory anymore. You understand that?"

He pauses to drink whiskey. I watch his thick, full lips parting to allow the golden liquid to enter. I notice he shudders slightly as it goes down, smiling contentedly against its warm hit.

"Well, that's where I met her. She was the evening librarian. I remember the first time I saw her over the top of a book I was struggling to read. I'll never forget that initial sight of her."

His eyes leave me for a moment, looking over my shoulder, seeing something not in the room with us. When his eyes meet mine once more, they sparkle with a childish joy.

"Magnificent. There's no other word to describe her. Tall and elegant; stunningly beautiful. She seemed to carry with her an innate charisma, as though her looks alone could hold your interest forever. I was immediately captivated.

I couldn't believe someone so beautiful could exist.

Now I know that sounds cheesy, perhaps a little over-the-top, but that's the way it was. I didn't speak to her at first - in fact, it was a long time before I even plucked up the courage to meet her eyes and return her smile. But eventually I did, more through necessity than any degree of courage. Because, you see, I simply _had_ to speak to her. The thought that another day would go by without her being part of my life was unbearable. You understand that?"

I nod. I'm thinking about Rosalie. She sits at home now while I sit here, drowning torturing thoughts. I understand love very much.

I look at my drinking partner and see him properly for the first time. He is not as old as I initially supposed him to be, his hunched over frame belying his sparkling, youthful eyes. It might be the dim light or the bright whiskey that installs in them their glow.

Or maybe they reflect the beauty he looks in upon.

"I started going to the library more and more. Now I had an extra incentive to put the time in on my studying. Only I was spending less time reading and more time talking to my delightful new friend. Her name was Esme, by the way."

I smile at the unique name.

"Now I won't bore you with all the details of our courtship. But we started seeing each other outside the library and very soon realised we were both in love. She was the one person I could really talk to, and I mean that literally. You see, I had this stammer back then. It was quite disabling, more through the way I perceived myself than any real inability to speak. But with Esme, I didn't stammer, even with my initial nervousness. For the first time I could be myself with someone. Very soon, I didn't have a stammer anymore."

A sip of whiskey. A puff on the cigar.

"Anyway, we eventually got our own little place together and lived happily ever after."

I'm surprised at the abrupt end to the story. I had been warming to the older man and his tale. I turn to my companion expectantly but he is engrossed in his drink and it is apparent he has finished his story. I wonder if painful memories have been stirred.

I don't know what to say, so instead I turn to my own drink. I tip the bottle and allow the numbing liquid to fill me. When it is empty, I buy another. After a while the older man says:

"So tell me about your woman. Why are you drinking like it's going out of fashion?"

Earlier I would have felt reluctant to talk about my problems, but the old man has shared much with me and I feel I should return his confidence.

And perhaps the alcohol has helped to loosen my inhibition.

My beer bottle is revolved between my hands, I pick at the label, starting to peel it from the condensation-wet glass. I begin my own story.

"Her name's Rosalie. We met a couple of years ago at a mutual friend's party. I fancied her straight away - she's a gorgeous woman - and we started going out. It was quite a while before I fell in love with her though. I'm normally cautious about such things, I don't like to invest everything in one person; But with her I couldn't help myself."

The old man smiles around his cigar.

"Things have always been so good between us, far better than they've ever been with anyone else. We've always been so happy together."

"So what's changed?"

I look at him. Behind the veiling smoke, his eyes hold a hospitable kindness.

"She came home late last night. She'd been out somewhere whilst I was at home waiting for her. I asked her where she'd been but she wouldn't say. She'd been drinking, that much was obvious: her speech was deliberated and hurried at the same time. Eventually, she said she'd been out with some girlfriends from work, but it was obvious she was lying. I'm worried she's seeing someone else."

"I see."

My companion is silent for a moment, tipping his drink so that the ice-cubes rattle. He looks contemplatively at the smouldering tip of his cigar and then says:

"How much do you love her?"

I answer immediately. "A lot."

He shakes his head. "No, tell me how much you love her."

I think for a while, not really understanding what the old man means, looking for an answer that will satisfy him. But when I eventually speak, it is with a heartfelt honesty.

"Sometimes I think I couldn't go on without her. She's everything to me. When she smiles I feel alive. If I didn't have that smile to look upon, why would I want to continue seeing? What is there beyond her?"

"That sounds pretty serious."

"Yeah, I guess it is."

"Do you know what you must do?"

He stubs out his cigar, drains the last golden remnants of his drink and looks deep into my eyes.

"_**You must kill her**_."

I choke on my beer, leaning forward to cough-up loose liquid. When recovered, I stare at him incredulously, thinking I must have heard him wrong.

To dispel any doubt, he repeats.

"You must kill your Rosalie."

I am lost for words. My mouth opens and closes impotently, as though it knows there are words that should be spoken, but which my brain is unable to supply.

"That's what I did. I murdered my Esme. I loved her so much that I had to kill her. You understand that?"

I sit unbelieving, listening with a horrified fascination.

"There came a point where I loved her so much I couldn't bear the thought that it would come to an end. So I ended it myself, while things were still so good. There's so much pain out there. People get cancer; people die slow, horrible deaths: what if such a fate should befall her? How would I cope with that? The way I saw it, things were so good that they couldn't get any better. They could only go downhill. Everything was so perfect I had to end it then.

I smothered her with a pillow while she was asleep one night. She woke up, started thrashing about, but it was a quick, painless death. I went down for ten years for that, but it was worth it. Because when I remember her, it is only ever good. I finished it before the bad things could settle in."

I sit in stunned silence. My head swims and not just with the effects of alcohol.

"And that's what you've got to do. You've got to kill Rosalie. While things are still good."

The older man turns away and waves a ten-pound note in the bartender's direction. My mind swarms with a multitude of emotions: confusion, anger, fear. I still recoil from the older man's startling disclosure.

"That makes no sense," I tell him.

"Why would I want to kill her? Why would I want to hurt someone I love so much?"

"Because you know it can't last forever. Things are going to go bad. She'll get ill; she'll become old and ugly; she'll find someone else and leave you shattered and broken."

I'm thinking back to last night, sitting at the kitchen table waiting for Rosalie to come home, wondering where she was, with whom she might be.

"If you kill her, the present will be suspended in time. Things won't have to degrade, she won't have to hurt you."

My mouth splits in an ironic smile. Despite the ridiculousness of his argument, it does hold a twisted logic. Someone more gullible might lend it some credence; start to see some persuasiveness in such crazy ramblings. Rosalie, for example, has always been one that is easily led, listening to people with a trusting belief. But I'm more cynical than her and look at things with a cold, logical reasoning. I dispel the old man's argument unequivocally.

"You're crazy," I tell him, standing up to leave. I no longer wish to sit with the man I had supposed to be so genial, but whom I now see only as a sick, twisted lunatic.

As I go, he says to me:

"If you truly love her, you will kill her."

I ignore him and leave the bar quickly without looking back.

I walk home in a daze, my mind filled with the old man's poisoned assertions. They have struck me hard, maybe because with the growing fear that my wife is seeing someone else, they don't seem so unreasonable.

I get home and go through to the kitchen where I find Rosalie sitting at the table. She stands as I walk in and turns towards me with her blue wide, worried eyes.

"Where have you been, Emmett? I've been waiting for you."

"I just went for a few drinks after work," I tell her, my mind still heavy with an old man's twisted evil.

"We need to talk," she says, wide eyes now looking slightly fearful. I sit at the kitchen table to await what she has to say.

I'm not expecting the words that leave her lips.

"I went to that same American bar after work last night," she says, and I start to feel fear slowly creeping through me. "I got talking to an old man there. He made me think about a few things."

She takes an object from the draw below the microwave and holds it in both hands before her.

"I love you so much," she says.

And comes at me with the knife.


End file.
